Is a nurse manager role on the horizon?

As a habitual charge nurse, I fell into management.

At my first job, where I was one of a bulk pack of 50 newly hired graduate nurses, staff nurses rotated through three critical care units on all three shifts. For some reason, every time I came to work, I was assigned to be the charge nurse. I discovered I liked it. Everyone else hated it.

Becoming a nurse manager wasn't a planned career move, but if I had formally planned my career, it's probably the path I would have chosen. I liked managing and leading a team and was good at it.

I enjoyed the close interpersonal exchange. I found that I loved being around nurses and fostering an empowering environment. And I found I could facilitate good patient care and high-quality outcomes. What a great job, interacting with the professionals you love and getting paid for it. If any of that resonates with you, consider making the move to management. If you're still on the fence, maybe one of these reasons to switch will convince you.

4 reasons to become a nurse manager

You can have far-reaching influence. Bedside nurses change the world, one patient at a time, and that is important. But managers can change the world, every day, by influencing dozens of nurses and the hundreds of patients who they touch indirectly through their staff.
It's where the money is. According to our Nurse.com Nursing Salary Research Report, nurse managers make an average of $92,025 per year compared to an average RN salary of $69,224. That 25% gain is hard compensation for a job that demands your engagement 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the ability to make tough, sometimes unpopular decisions with a sincere smile, on a daily basis. It's a gateway to even more money, if you choose. Chief nursing officers make a base average salary of $127,754, and many rise to become a CEO or COO with a mean salary of $157,437. That's serious money.
You get to be in charge. If you are like some of us and feel a need to be in charge of everything, management is for you. Be forewarned though, this role is drastically changing as shared governance becomes more popular, forcing managers to put others in control of their own practice and the resources that support it. However, believe it or not, this change has actually augmented managers' control and influence over their units.
The skills you learn go with you. Managing is a portable skill set that you can take from job to job throughout your career. Once a manager, always a manager, even if you find yourself as a team of one with no reports. Once you have learned how to formally manage a team, you can transition those skills to project management or committee work.

There are many paths to management, including my own in which I simply acquiesced to it. If you want to control your entry, there are things you can do and things you must do.

Steer in the right direction

Declare your intent and find a mentor. Tell the right managers, including your immediate boss, and solicit their support. Your immediate supervisor should become one of your biggest advocates. If he or she doesn't support you, find out why. You're either not looked upon as management material by that person or you're working for the wrong boss, who might not want anyone to get ahead. Most managers would like nothing more than to mentor someone who works for them into management. I know I did, over and over.

My career-long obsession with succession planning drove me to look for potential managers on my team all the time. For me, helping others to become effective managers has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of being a manager.

Prepare yourself. Start reading up on the skill set that marks the excellent nurse manager. Start thinking of yourself as a manager. Purchase attire for the job to which you aspire. Ask for advice from managers you admire. Get buy-in from your significant other, since most management jobs in nursing come with 24-hour responsibilities that invade your personal time. Prepare to go back to school if you don't have a master's degree in nursing and/or in business administration, depending on the organization to which you apply. If you want to get a handle on the content in which managers become certified, scope out an online certification review course or nurse manager competencies.
Tailor your resume or CV to emphasize experiences that demonstrate management potential. For example, did you volunteer in a day camp that made you responsible for the health or activities of a large group of children through their counselors? Did you have a leadership role when participating on sports teams in high school or college? If you have been in charge of other people, anytime in your career, document the specifics.
Rehearse for interviews so you demonstrate you have management potential. It is true that managers divide the world into people who are managers and those who will never be managers. Eventually you will have that interview in which you have to convince someone that you belong in the management group. You need to be able to demonstrate management potential through examples of any formal or informal structured activity that put you in charge of getting things done through others.

If you can talk about times when you were able to step up and call the shots when others were running for the hills, you'll be demonstrating solid management skills. And be able to differentiate between management and leadership, which demand two very different skill sets.

If you are able to demonstrate both, you'll have a stronger case for someone to take a chance on you as a first-time manager.
Find a management job. This may seem obvious, but management jobs for someone who hasn't been a manager can be hard to find. Lucky for you, charge nurse positions in many hospitals are formal positions that are halfway to management. Being a charge nurse is an open proving ground for demonstrating you are acquiring management skills. One way to start building your skills is to take formal courses, such as our Charge Nurse Focused CE or the Forum for Shared Governance's recommended education topics for managers in shared governance environments.
Join the American Organization of Nurse Executives. I'm a big "joiner" and advocate that for others. There's no easier way to build a network of people who can help you find a job and mechanisms to becoming a manager than attending AONE meetings.

The charge nurse thing that I alluded to in the beginning? One of the head nurses on the units through which I rotated went out on maternity leave and recommended me for her job on her way out. I got it. A few years later, my supervisor left for a better paying job closer to her home. She recommended me for her job, and I got that one, as well. With a beginning like that, I have been bouncing from one great management job to another for 40 years. But the best managerial experience for me has been my admission as a patient to a hospital unit or an OR service where the nurse in charge was someone I had mentored years before as a new manager.

Try these courses on management and mentoring!

Succession Planning in Nursing (1 contact hr) To ensure a pool of qualified internal candidates, succession planning is a necessary business strategy. Succession planning encompasses the focused, formal assessment and development of individuals for future positions in leadership. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists registered nursing as the occupation with the highest probability of job growth through 2022 with a probable growth increase from 2.71 million in 2012 to 3.4 million in 2022. There will be a need for 525,000 replacement nurses due to those leaving the workforce. When coupled with the total projected growth, 2022 promises to demonstrate a shortage of 1.05 million registered nurses. According to a 2013 survey, 55% of the nursing workforce is 50 years of age or older. With baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) moving into retirement, healthcare facilities need to hire and retain qualified leadership personnel in a competitive market. Interviewing for Career Advancement (1 contact hr) Whether you're a staff nurse, a manager, or an advanced practice nurse, interviewing is an important opportunity to market yourself for career advancement. Whether you're interviewing for a new position, starting a new career, or seeking a promotion, the key to a successful interview is careful and thorough preparation. If two candidates have almost equal qualifications, it may not be the most qualified, but the best-prepared candidate who gets the offer. The better prepared you are, the more likely you'll be chosen over the competition. This continuing education program will enhance nurses' ability to prepare for and participate in job interviews. Partnership (1 contact hr) Mentoring is not new to nursing; however, nurses often confuse mentoring with other career development relationships, such as coaching, precepting or peer strategizing. Because of this lack of clarity in the literature, nurses need to understand the difference between mentoring and other career development relationships. This continuing education module offers information about the mentor/prot'g' relationship, the benefits of such relationships and how to go about establishing one.